'But, my father, I cannot be a monk out in the world.'
'You will neglect them at your proper peril. Do not suppose I shall not know. You will be in error.'
'We intend to have you kept in sight. You had better do as I advised, and have a discreet priest as your companion.'
'And is the presence of such an one incompatible with your ideas of freedom? My son, you'll be on your knees calling for me within a week.'
'In that case, take care lest you call in vain. Remember five years ago. If you become again what you were then, it will be for ever, and ever, and ever! You'll be but a voice perpetually calling out of hell.'
'My father, I--I am stronger than I was then.'
'We will hope it. Though I seem to hear the devil laughing. Now, my son, go!'
'Yes, I will bless you. But be careful, O my son, lest, as Aaron's rod was transformed into a serpent, by your own action my blessing becomes a curse.'
His lordship knelt. The Prior blessed him. Then his lordship went to bed, though the straw pallet on which he cast himself could hardly, on that occasion at any rate, be described as a bed of rest.
There were peas in his lordship's shoes: unboiled.
For some time he had been arriving at the conclusion that he had no so whole-hearted a leaning towards the religious life as he had once imagined. The scrap of paper was the top brick; it crowned the edifice of his discontent. More, it supplied him with the necessary courage to confess his backsliding to his superior; that keen-sighted religious being perhaps better prepared for the confession than the penitent imagined. It is even possible that some expectation of the kind had always been part and parcel of the Prior's plans. The Marquis of Twickenham, who is at once a millionaire and a backboneless scamp, is not the kind of bird which often drops into the monastic draw-net, whether at home or abroad. When caught, he may be even more useful at the end of a piece of string than in a cell.
Which explains the ease with which his lordship regained what he fondly hoped would be his liberty. The truth being that persons of his type are never free; owing to their habit of mistaking licence for liberty placing them in continual bondage to some one or something.